These golfers in Des Moines, Iowa, were out on the course on Jan. 5 as temperatures reached 60 degrees.
By Miguel Llanos, msnbc.com
How soon we forget. Sure, this last month?has been warmer than average across the lower 48 states,?but?the record for warmest January was set just?six years ago in January 2006 and it's too soon to tell if that will fall.
Deke Arndt, chief of the National Climatic Data Center's monitoring service,?told msnbc.com that he can't rule out a record. "It's too early for us to call shots" on just where January 2012 will end up, he said, "but it has been quite warm so far and we expect it to finish in the top 15 or 20,"?based on records dating back to 1895. The official report for January comes out on Feb. 7, he added.
Weather.com meteorologist Stu Ostro noted that Jan. 1-23 in 2006 was warmer than the same period this year. "So at least as of that point this January was running well behind the record pace," he told msnbc.com.
With the exception of Alaska, which is seeing record cold and snow, the warmer temperatures have been widespread.?
Areas?that saw above average temperatures cover?"a rather large amount of real estate in the U.S. from coast-to-coast," is how weather.com meteorologist Chris Dolce put it in his look back. "In fact, the only places that have experienced overall below-average temperatures this month are the far Southeast (southern Florida) and far Northwest corners (western Washington and Oregon) of the country!"
The map below illustrates that, with above average temps seen in orange, red and brown.
Another measure is how many localities have reported record highs or lows for a given day in January. Turns out, nearly?2,800 daily record highs were tied or broken through last week. As for daily record lows, only 160 of those were reported.
Arndt cited two key factors impacting climate this last month. A La Nina cycle is in place, and typically that means colder and snowier winters in the northern U.S. But?La Nina's impact was tempered by?cold Arctic air being blocked from moving south by a shift in what's known as the Arctic Oscillation.
STORY: 62 below makes for deep freeze in Alaska STORY: North set for colder months, forecaster says
The warm spell has also meant more tornadoes this month than normal.?This month?looks set to be the third busiest January on record, with 74 so far. That compares to 218 in January 1999 and 88 in January 2008.
noaa.gov
This chart shows how far off an individual year was from the mean for January temperatures in the continental U.S.
?
Back in 2006, news media reported the lack of winter as well. In Duluth, Minn., folks were flying kites and wearing shorts?on Jan. 28, 2006. One widely reported upside back then, as now: lower heating bills.
NO DEAL: The wait for an expected deal between Greece and its creditors rattled financial markets around the world Monday. Yields for ultra-safe U.S. government debt hit their lowest this year, and the euro and European stocks fell.
GREECE TALKS: Greece and its creditors were said to be close to an agreement over the weekend. It's aimed at cutting Greece's debt by roughly euro100 billion ($132 billion).
TO PORTUGAL: Borrowing costs for European countries with the heaviest debt burdens shot higher. The two-year interest rate for Portugal's government debt jumped to 21 percent after trading around 14 percent last week.
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) ? Singer Nancy Sinatra may have had boots made for walking, but she never attended Pottstown Middle School.
Starting Monday the Philadelphia suburban district is banning the wearing of fuzzy open-top boots, including the popular Ugg brand, to middle school classes because students have been stashing cell phones in the loose footwear, according to district director of community relations John Armato.
"Cell phones are a problem for obvious reasons," Armato said.
Superintendent Reed Lindley said the school principal asked for the boot ban "because of the classroom disruptions that are resulting from ringing cell phones."
Students at the school can avoid going toe-to-toe with school officials by wearing boots that lace up and usually have a snugger fit.
First time offenders will get detention, and subsequent violations include two detentions, followed by confiscation of the phone, Armato said.
Middle school parent Adrienne Beyer said she thinks the ban is extreme.
"I understand there may be a handful of kids that shove cell phones down their boots, but why does the handful have to ruin it for the other 600 students? But, I said to my daughter, 'It's a rule and we're going to follow it,'" Beyer said.
Ugg sheepskin boots originated in Australia and New Zealand and have become popular with pre-teens and teenagers in the United States in recent years.
Remarks is a brand new handwriting note-taking, and PDF annotating app for iPad from Readdle. I'm convinced the team at Readdle never sleeps because they release new apps, and update their catalog of existing apps, at pretty fast pace. They've focused on PDF lately, seeing a need for good editing, form filling, and annotating on iPad, and Remarks extends that expertise in a really interesting way.
A team of biologists at the University of York has made an important advance in our understanding of the way cholera attacks the body. The discovery could help scientists target treatments for the globally significant intestinal disease which kills more than 100,000 people every year.
The disease is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, which is able to colonise the intestine usually after consumption of contaminated water or food. Once infection is established, the bacterium secretes a toxin that causes watery diarrhoea and ultimately death if not treated rapidly. Colonisation of the intestine is difficult for incoming bacteria as they have to be highly competitive to gain a foothold among the trillions of other bacteria already in situ.
Scientists at York, led by Dr. Gavin Thomas in the University's Department of Biology, have investigated one of the important routes that V. cholerae uses to gain this foothold. To be able to grow in the intestine the bacterium harvests and then eats a sugar, called sialic acid, that is present on the surface of our gut cells.
Collaborators of the York group at the University of Delaware, USA, led by Professor Fidelma Boyd, had shown previously that eating sialic acid was important for the survival of V. cholerae in animal models, but the mechanism by which the bacteria recognise and take up the sialic was unknown.
The York research, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), demonstrates that the pathogen uses a particular kind of transporter called a TRAP transporter to recognise sialic acid and take it up into the cell. The transporter has particular properties that are suited to scavenging the small amount of available sialic acid. The research also provided some important basic information about how TRAP transporters work in general.
The leader of the research in York, Dr. Gavin Thomas, said: "This work continues our discoveries of how bacteria that grow in our body exploit sialic acid for their survival and help us to take forward our efforts to design chemicals to inhibit these processes in different bacterial pathogens."
The research is published in the latest issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry and was primarily the work of Dr Christopher Mulligan, a postdoctoral fellow in the Dr Thomas's laboratory.
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University of York: http://www.york.ac.uk
Thanks to University of York for this article.
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The moon may have possessed a magnetic field for much longer than previously thought, one that was also much stronger than scientists had predicted, a new study finds.
Earth's magnetic field is created by its dynamo, its roiling molten metal core. Scientists have long suspected that the moon once had a dynamo as well, since evidence of magnetism was found in rocks brought back from the moon by Apollo astronauts.
But, meteoroids colliding with the moon could have created plasma, which could in turn have generated magnetic fields. To see if a dynamo or meteoroids might be responsible for magnetism on the moon, researchers wanted to examine rocks that had not been influenced by cosmic impacts.
Now an analysis of lunar volcanic rock returned from the Apollo 11 mission suggests the moon did indeed possess a powerful dynamo in its core 3.7 billion years ago.
"The findings in general were a big surprise," said study lead author Erin Shea, a geologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "When we selected this sample, we had an idea that it'd have a good magnetic record, but we didn't have an idea how good it would be."
These findings, combined with previous analyses of different 4.2-billion-year-old lunar rocks, suggest the lunar dynamo existed for at least a half-billion years. [Infographic: Inside Earth's Moon]
"The implications are amazing and interesting," Shea told SPACE.com. "If the moon had a dynamo that lived a long time, why not an asteroid like Vesta or a smaller asteroid?"
It remains unclear, however, what might have powered this ancient lunar magnetic field, the researchers added.
Scientists had thought that any lunar dynamo that might have once existed was generated much the same way as it is on Earth ? by the cooling of its interior, which would caused the moon's core to churn as molten metal cooled and sank. However, if the lunar dynamo lasted at least 500 million years, as the current findings suggest, researchers now have to find alternative power sources to explain such a long-lived effect ? perhaps impacts from large asteroids, or shifts in the moon's axis of spin.
"If the moon's dynamo had the same power source as Earth, it would have died off a really long time ago," Shea said. "Now we want to see how long it did last, by looking at lunar samples from existing collections and, hopefully, fingers crossed, by going back to the moon. We'd want to see if the moon had a steady-state dynamo, one that lasted the entirety of the 500 million years, or if it maybe started up and then turned off and then turned on again."
The scientists detailed their findings in the Jan. 27 issue of the journal Science.
Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcomand on Facebook.
NEW YORK (Reuters) ? With worries about the debt crisis in Europe and high unemployment in the United States drawing the public's attention, the sliding value of corporate pension funds has largely gone unnoticed.
The problem came into stark relief on Wednesday, when Boeing Co joined a raft of U.S. companies that have announced hefty cash injections into underfunded pension plans, including General Electric Co, DuPont, Alcoa Inc, Honeywell International Inc and Raytheon Co.
Boeing said it would add $1.5 billion in cash to its pension plan in 2012, nearly triple the amount it injected in 2011. The huge jump caused the aircraft maker's full-year earnings forecast to miss Wall Street estimates.
Analysts say pension top-ups will take a big bite out of corporate earnings this year, due to more rigorous funding requirements and an erosion of investment returns caused by weak stock markets and low interest rates.
Of the 341 companies in the S&P 500 index with defined benefit pension plans, 97 percent are underfunded, according to a Credit Suisse analysis. Despite generous contributions last year, Credit Suisse estimated the plans' liabilities at $458 billion at the end of 2011, an 86 percent increase from a year earlier.
"This level of underfunding is something, at least in the time that we've been following the issue, that we haven't seen," said Credit Suisse analyst David Zion, noting that the 2011 estimate is nearly three times larger than underfunding in 2002, after another U.S. recession.
Large pension contributions are an immediate hit on cash flow, diverting money from shareholder dividends, stock buybacks and capital investments. (Click here to see a graphic that compares a selection of pension obligations against cash positions: http://r.reuters.com/zyd36s)
The brunt of the pain will be felt by manufacturers and other large industrial companies, which have legacy pension obligations and older workforces, analysts say. Many companies have done away with pension funds in recent years, moving to 401(k) retirement plans, which are funded by employee contributions and in many cases a company match.
Credit Suisse singled out seven companies whose estimated 2012 pension contributions likely will exceed 10 percent of trailing cash flow from operations. They include A.K. Steel Holding Corp, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co, Weyerhaeuser Co, Boeing, Northrop Grumman Corp, Lockheed Martin Corp and U.S. Steel Corp.
Like Boeing, AK Steel has disclosed a pension contribution for 2012. Lockheed said it is fully compliant with government funding standards. Northrop Grumman declined to comment. The other companies were not immediately available to comment.
IMPACT ON EMPLOYEES
The U.S. Pension Protection Act requires a company to notify its employees when their pension fund's asset value dips below 80 percent of obligations. When that happens, companies can only make lump sum distributions equal to half the benefit owed to workers. The other half has to be in the form of an annuity.
Plans that are less than 60 percent-funded are frozen and prevented from making any lump sum payouts. They can only provide annuities, and workers no longer continue to accrue benefits until the funding status climbs higher.
While the Pension Protection Act was passed in 2006, corporate America persuaded lawmakers to delay implementing major aspects of the law during the recession. These kick in this year.
Many companies try to decrease the volatility of their pension plans by changing asset allocation or culling headcount through offering a lump sum payment.
More than half of plans are likely to offer lump sum distributions over the next two years, according to a recent survey of senior-level financial executives by Mercer and CFO Research Services.
"We're likely to continue to see corporations attempting in one form or another to essentially buy out some employees from these defined benefit plans," said Robert Strong, a business professor at the University of Maine.
OPERATION TWIST
The U.S. stock market ended last year virtually unchanged, after a volatile 12 months that produced monthly performances ranging from gains of nearly 11 percent and declines of more than 7 percent in the S&P 500 index.
Interest rates were pressured by the U.S. Federal Reserve's stimulus program last summer, known as "Operation Twist." The yield on U.S. 30-year Treasuries dropped 34 percent in 2011 to 4.39 percent, while the 10-year note fell 44 percent to 1.89 percent.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday the U.S. central bank would likely keep interest rates near zero until at least late 2014.
Rock bottom interest rates force a company to have more cash on hand to meet payments since its money cannot earn as much in future interest.
"For years now, we haven't had to make a contribution," said Nick Fanadakis, DuPont's chief financial officer, after the chemical giant announced a $500 million cash injection into its U.S. pension fund. "The return on assets was able to fund the pension plan."
The interest rate DuPont uses to calculate returns, known as the discount rate, fell to 4.5 percent in 2011 from 5.5 percent in 2010, Fanadakis said.
THE UPSIDE
Besides meeting regulations that require companies to shore up underfunded pension plans, companies have other incentives to do so. For example, UBS analysts point to a peculiarity in accounting rules that let companies forecast pension performance using long-term rates of return, which are currently higher than actual market results. Any shortfall in the return can then be amortized over five years. (http://blogs.reuters.com/taxbreak/2012/01/19/pay-into-pension-get-boost-to-earnings/)
Nor is it necessarily true that a cash infusion into a pension fund is a bad thing. Pension funds invest in stocks, bonds and other assets that can help the economy, said Jeremy Bulow, a professor at Stanford Business School.
"This money is going into the pension fund, which is being used to invest in corporate America, as opposed to going into whatever else the company might use it for," he said. "It's not really clear to me that takes away from investment in the economy."
Regardless, large payouts will be the rule, not the exception, for many companies this year.
Mark Oline, an analyst with Fitch Ratings, said companies that have dangerously underfunded pensions could be at risk of a ratings downgrade.
"For us, a strategy of hoping for higher interest rates or higher asset returns is not a strategy," said Oline. "Higher contributions are required."
(Reporting By Ernest Scheyder and Jilian Mincer; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Steve Orlofsky)
ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2012) ? Researchers in Italy have used two high-speed computer algorithms to analyse the connections between a large sub-set of the more than half a billion users of the social networking site Facebook to reveal that the system has a very strong structure. The study, published in the International Journal of Social Network Mining, shows that Facebook has a well-defined community structure that follows a statistical power law in which there are a huge number of people with few connections and a much smaller number with a large number of connections.
Emilio Ferrara of the Department of Mathematics, at the University of Messina, has anonymised Facebook data and used two sophisticated algorithms to uncover the hidden network structure across Facebook's millions of users. His research demonstrates that as with many social networks in the everyday world and networks found in nature, Facebook has the three common properties of such systems. First, it demonstrates the "small world" effect, known colloquially as "six degrees of separation" in which it is frequently possible to connect the majority of members, the nodes, of a network with all the other members through a small number of mutual friends or connections.
Secondly, Facebook follows the power law degree distribution where there are many users with a small number of connections. There are thus fewer and fewer users with more and more connections and only a very small number of people with a huge number of connections. Thirdly, Facebook rather obviously manifests as a community of interacting users rather than a collection of individuals.
One might imagine that so much is obvious given the popularity and activity of Facebook, which is the number one web destination and "application" for many millions of people. However, in order to prove that it is indeed a community-type network a statistical analysis of the type carried out by Ferrara was required. With the proof in hand, one might now investigate the structure of the Facebook network in more detail, apply the findings to other social networks, such as Twitter and LinkedIn in order to spot the differences and similarities with a view to informing those who operate and create such networks. The same research might also point the way to a better understanding of natural networks, such as offline human communities, insect colonies or even the spread of emergent diseases.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Inderscience, via AlphaGalileo.
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Journal Reference:
Emilio Ferrara. Community structure discovery in Facebook. International Journal of Social Network Mining, 2012; 1 (1): 67 DOI: 10.1504/IJSNM.2012.045106
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
NEW YORK ? Benchmark oil prices rose Wednesday afternoon, briefly topping $100 per barrel, after the Federal Reserve said it would keep interest rates at record lows for a year longer than expected.
The Fed's plan allows consumers and business to continue to borrow money cheaply in the U.S., which should help boost the economy of the world's largest oil consumer. The central bank, which has kept its benchmark interest rate near zero for three years, said it doesn't plan to raise the rate before late 2014.
"They're telling investors `Hey, there's a lot of uncertainty in this world, but the one thing you can count on is that we're going to keep interest rates low,'" PFG Best analyst Phil Flynn said. That kind of promise should spark more expansion among American businesses "and that will hopefully encourage more energy demand."
Benchmark crude on Wednesday rose by 45 cents to finish at $99.40 per barrel in New York. At one point it was as high as $100.40. Brent crude fell 22 cents to end at $110.21 per barrel in London.
Major stock indices also rose in afternoon trading following the Fed statement.
Earlier in the day, the Energy Department said the nation's crude supplies increased by 3.6 million barrels last week, far more than analysts expected. Demand for oil dropped by about 4 percent. Gasoline demand was down as well, with the four-week average 6.4 percent below year-ago levels.
Supplies of gasoline and distillates, which include diesel fuel, dropped as refineries slowed operations in the face of slack demand.
Meanwhile, Iran ratcheted up tensions in the Persian Gulf with threats to halt oil sales to Europe.
Iran, the world's third-largest oil exporter, has been engaged in a lengthy dustup with Western nations over its secretive nuclear program, which may be developing a nuclear bomb. The European Union recently announced plans to embargo Iranian oil this summer. Iran now threatens to cut oil off to Europe sooner than that. EU nations account for about 18 percent of Iran's oil sales, and Iranian lawmakers think stopping oil sales to Europe would hurt those nations more than it would Iran.
Natural gas prices continued to rebound from recent 10-year lows, rising 17 cents, or nearly 7 percent, to finish at $2.73 per 1,000 cubic feet on Wednesday. Prices are being pushed up by forecasts for cooler winter temperatures across much of the country, closer to average for this time of year. The mild winter thus far has slowed demand for natural gas to heat homes.
Gasoline pump prices in the U.S. were flat on Wednesday at a national average of $3.38 per gallon, according to auto club AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. That's about the same as a week ago, 15 cents higher than a month ago and 27 cents more than a year ago.
In other energy trading heating oil was virtually unchanged at $3.02 a gallon and gasoline futures rose by 3 cents to end at $2.83 a gallon.
ScienceDaily (Jan. 24, 2012) ? A molecule embedded in the membrane of human liver cells that aids in cholesterol absorption also allows the entry of hepatitis C virus, the first step in hepatitis C infection, according to research at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine.
The cholesterol receptor offers a promising new target for anti-viral therapy, for which an approved drug may already exist, say the researchers, whose findings were reported online in advance of publication in Nature Medicine.
An estimated 4.1 million Americans are infected with hepatitis C virus, or HCV, which attacks the liver and leads to inflammation, according to the National Institutes of Health. Most people have no symptoms initially and may not know they have the infection until liver damage shows up decades later during routine medical tests.
Previous studies showed that cholesterol was somehow involved in HCV infection. The UIC researchers suspected that a receptor called NPC1L1, known to help maintain cholesterol balance might also be transporting the virus into the cell.
The receptor is common in the gut of many species -- but is found on liver cells only in humans and chimpanzees, says Susan Uprichard, assistant professor in medicine and microbiology and immunology and principal investigator in the study. These primates, she said, are the only animals that can be infected by HCV.
Uprichard and her coworkers showed that knocking down or blocking access to the NPC1L1 receptor prevented the virus from entering and infecting cells.
Bruno Sainz, Jr., UIC postdoctoral research associate in medicine and first author of the paper, said because the receptor is involved in cholesterol metabolism it was already well-studied. A drug that "specifically and uniquely targets NPC1L1" already exists and is approved for use to lower cholesterol levels, he said.
The FDA-approved drug ezetimibe (sold under the trade-name Zetia) is readily available and perfectly targeted to the receptor, Sainz said, so the researchers had an ideal method for testing NPC1L1's involvement in HCV infection.
They used the drug to block the receptor before, during and after inoculation with the virus, in cell culture and in a small-animal model, to evaluate the receptor's role in infection and the drug's potential as an anti-hepatitis agent.
The researchers showed that ezetimibe inhibited HCV infection in cell culture and in mice transplanted with human liver cells. And, unlike any currently available drugs, ezetimibe was able to inhibit infection by all six types of HCV.
The study, Uprichard said, opens up a number of possibilities for therapeutics.
Hepatitis C is the leading cause for liver transplantation in the U.S., but infected patients have problems after transplant because the virus attacks the new liver, Uprichard said.
While current drugs are highly toxic and often cannot be tolerated by transplant patients taking immunosuppressant drugs, ezetimibe is quite safe and has been used long-term without harm by people to control their cholesterol, Uprichard said. Because it prevents entry of the virus into cells, ezetimibe may help protect the new liver from infection.
For patients with chronic hepatitis C, ezetimibe may be able to be used in combination with current drugs.
"We forsee future HCV therapy as a drug-cocktail approach, like that used against AIDS," Uprichard said. "Based on cell culture and mouse model data, we expect ezetimibe, an entry inhibitor, may have tremendous synergy with current anti-HCV drugs resulting in an improvement in the effectiveness of treatment."
The study was supported by NIH Public Health Service grants, the American Cancer Society Research Scholar grant, the UIC Center for Clinical and Translational Science NIH grant, the UIC Council to Support Gastrointestinal and Liver Disease, and a grant from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan.
Naina Barretto, Danyelle Martin, Snawar Hussain, Katherine Marsh and Xuemei Yu, of UIC; Nobuhiko Hiraga, Michio Imamura and Kazuaki Chayama, of Hiroshima University in Japan; and Waddah Alrefai of UIC and the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center in Chicago also contributed to the study.
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Bruno Sainz, Naina Barretto, Danyelle N Martin, Nobuhiko Hiraga, Michio Imamura, Snawar Hussain, Katherine A Marsh, Xuemei Yu, Kazuaki Chayama, Waddah A Alrefai, Susan L Uprichard. Identification of the Niemann-Pick C1?like 1 cholesterol absorption receptor as a new hepatitis C virus entry factor. Nature Medicine, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nm.2581
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Mate competition by males over females is common in many animal species. During mating season male testosterone levels rise, resulting in an increase in aggressive behavior and masculine features. Male bonobos, however, invest much more into friendly relationships with females. Elevated testosterone and aggression levels would collide with this increased tendency towards forming pair-relationships.
Bonobos are among the closest living relatives of humans. Like other great apes they live in groups made up of several males and females. Contrary to other ape species however, male bonobos do not, in general, outrank female individuals and do not dominate them in mating contexts. This constellation suggests that the selection for typically masculine behavioral patterns like aggression, dominance and intrasexual competition are met with antagonistic forces: On one hand it is advantageous if a male outcompetes a fellow male. This, however, implies that there is increased aggression and an elevated level of testosterone in high-ranking males. On the other hand ? as dominance relations between the sexes are rather balanced in bonobos ? it is likely that males benefit from having friendly pair-relationships with female individuals. Studies with birds and rodents show that a tendency towards forming pair-relationships correlates with lower male aggression rates and testosterone levels.
In a current study, Martin Surbeck, Gottfried Hohmann, Tobias Deschner and colleagues of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, found that in wild bonobos high-ranking males were more aggressive and their mating success was higher when compared to lower-ranking males. Contrary to other species in which males compete fiercely over access to females, there was no correlation between dominance status or aggression with testosterone levels. In addition, the researchers found that high-ranking males invested more often than lower-ranking group members into friendly relationships with females. This suggests that these friendly relationships between the sexes are associated with lower male testosterone levels.
"Our study suggests that in bonobos ? as in in humans ? intersexual friendships result in hormonal patterns that we know from species in which male individuals are actively participating in raising their young and in which the two sexes enter lasting pair-relationships", says Martin Surbeck.
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Martin Surbeck, Tobias Deschner, Grit Schubert, Anja Weltring, Gottfried Hohmann Mate competition, testosterone and intersexual relationships in bonobos (Pan paniscus) Animal Behavior, January 9, 2011
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft: http://www.mpg.de
Thanks to Max-Planck-Gesellschaft for this article.
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Restored wetlands rarely equal condition of original wetlandsPublic release date: 24-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Robert Sanders rsanders@berkeley.edu 510-643-6998 University of California - Berkeley
Study shows plant assemblage, carbon resources depleted even after 100 years
Wetland restoration is a billion-dollar-a-year industry in the United States that aims to create ecosystems similar to those that disappeared over the past century. But a new analysis of restoration projects shows that restored wetlands seldom reach the quality of a natural wetland.
"Once you degrade a wetland, it doesn't recover its normal assemblage of plants or its rich stores of organic soil carbon, which both affect natural cycles of water and nutrients, for many years," said David Moreno-Mateos, a University of California, Berkeley, postdoctoral fellow. "Even after 100 years, the restored wetland is still different from what was there before, and it may never recover."
Moreno-Mateos's analysis calls into question a common mitigation strategy exploited by land developers: create a new wetland to replace a wetland that will be destroyed and the land put to other uses. At a time of accelerated climate change caused by increased carbon entering the atmosphere, carbon storage in wetlands is increasingly important, he said.
"Wetlands accumulate a lot of carbon, so when you dry up a wetland for agricultural use or to build houses, you are just pouring this carbon into the atmosphere," he said. "If we keep degrading or destroying wetlands, for example through the use of mitigation banks, it is going to take centuries to recover the carbon we are losing."
The study showed that wetlands tend to recover most slowly if they are in cold regions, if they are small less than 100 contiguous hectares, or 250 acres, in area or if they are disconnected from the ebb and flood of tides or river flows.
"These context dependencies aren't necessarily surprising, but this paper quantifies them in ways that could guide decisions about restoration, or about whether to damage wetlands in the first place," said coauthor Mary Power, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology.
Moreno-Mateos, Power and their colleagues will publish their analysis in the Jan. 24 issue of PLoS (Public Library of Science) Biology.
Wetlands provide many societal benefits, Moreno-Mateos noted, such as biodiversity conservation, fish production, water purification, erosion control and carbon storage.
He found, however, that restored wetlands contained about 23 percent less carbon than untouched wetlands, while the variety of native plants was 26 percent lower, on average, after 50 to 100 years of restoration. While restored wetlands may look superficially similar and the animal and insect populations may be similar, too the plants take much longer to return to normal and establish the carbon resources in the soil that make for a healthy ecosystem.
Moreno-Mateos noted that numerous studies have shown that specific wetlands recover slowly, but his meta-analysis "might be a proof that this is happening in most wetlands."
"To prevent this, preserve the wetland, don't degrade the wetland," he said.
Moreno-Mateos, who obtained his Ph.D. while studying wetland restoration in Spain, conducted a meta-analysis of 124 wetland studies monitoring work at 621 wetlands around the world and comparing them with natural wetlands. Nearly 80 percent were in the United States and some were restored more than 100 years ago, reflecting of a long-standing American interest in restoration and a common belief that it's possible to essentially recreate destroyed wetlands. Half of all wetlands in North America, Europe, China and Australia were lost during the 20th century, he said. S
Though Moreno-Mateos found that, on average, restored wetlands are 25 percent less productive than natural wetlands, there was much variation. For example, wetlands in boreal and cold temperate forests tend to recover more slowly than do warm wetlands. One review of wetland restoration projects in New York state, for example, found that "after 55 years, barely 50 percent of the organic matter had accumulated on average in all these wetlands" compared to what was there before, he said.
"Current thinking holds that many ecosystems just reach an alternative state that is different, and you never will recover the original," he said.
In future studies, he will explore whether the slower carbon accumulation is due to a slow recovery of the native plant community or invasion by non-native plants.
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Coauthors with Moreno-Mateos and Power are Francisco A. Comin of the Department of Conservation of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Restoration at the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology in Zaragoza, Spain; and Roxana Yockteng of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France. Moreno-Mateos recently accepted a position as the restoration fellow at Stanford University's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve.
The work was supported by the Spanish Ministry for Innovation and Science, the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology and the National Center for Earth Surface Dynamics of the U.S. National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center.
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Restored wetlands rarely equal condition of original wetlandsPublic release date: 24-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Robert Sanders rsanders@berkeley.edu 510-643-6998 University of California - Berkeley
Study shows plant assemblage, carbon resources depleted even after 100 years
Wetland restoration is a billion-dollar-a-year industry in the United States that aims to create ecosystems similar to those that disappeared over the past century. But a new analysis of restoration projects shows that restored wetlands seldom reach the quality of a natural wetland.
"Once you degrade a wetland, it doesn't recover its normal assemblage of plants or its rich stores of organic soil carbon, which both affect natural cycles of water and nutrients, for many years," said David Moreno-Mateos, a University of California, Berkeley, postdoctoral fellow. "Even after 100 years, the restored wetland is still different from what was there before, and it may never recover."
Moreno-Mateos's analysis calls into question a common mitigation strategy exploited by land developers: create a new wetland to replace a wetland that will be destroyed and the land put to other uses. At a time of accelerated climate change caused by increased carbon entering the atmosphere, carbon storage in wetlands is increasingly important, he said.
"Wetlands accumulate a lot of carbon, so when you dry up a wetland for agricultural use or to build houses, you are just pouring this carbon into the atmosphere," he said. "If we keep degrading or destroying wetlands, for example through the use of mitigation banks, it is going to take centuries to recover the carbon we are losing."
The study showed that wetlands tend to recover most slowly if they are in cold regions, if they are small less than 100 contiguous hectares, or 250 acres, in area or if they are disconnected from the ebb and flood of tides or river flows.
"These context dependencies aren't necessarily surprising, but this paper quantifies them in ways that could guide decisions about restoration, or about whether to damage wetlands in the first place," said coauthor Mary Power, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology.
Moreno-Mateos, Power and their colleagues will publish their analysis in the Jan. 24 issue of PLoS (Public Library of Science) Biology.
Wetlands provide many societal benefits, Moreno-Mateos noted, such as biodiversity conservation, fish production, water purification, erosion control and carbon storage.
He found, however, that restored wetlands contained about 23 percent less carbon than untouched wetlands, while the variety of native plants was 26 percent lower, on average, after 50 to 100 years of restoration. While restored wetlands may look superficially similar and the animal and insect populations may be similar, too the plants take much longer to return to normal and establish the carbon resources in the soil that make for a healthy ecosystem.
Moreno-Mateos noted that numerous studies have shown that specific wetlands recover slowly, but his meta-analysis "might be a proof that this is happening in most wetlands."
"To prevent this, preserve the wetland, don't degrade the wetland," he said.
Moreno-Mateos, who obtained his Ph.D. while studying wetland restoration in Spain, conducted a meta-analysis of 124 wetland studies monitoring work at 621 wetlands around the world and comparing them with natural wetlands. Nearly 80 percent were in the United States and some were restored more than 100 years ago, reflecting of a long-standing American interest in restoration and a common belief that it's possible to essentially recreate destroyed wetlands. Half of all wetlands in North America, Europe, China and Australia were lost during the 20th century, he said. S
Though Moreno-Mateos found that, on average, restored wetlands are 25 percent less productive than natural wetlands, there was much variation. For example, wetlands in boreal and cold temperate forests tend to recover more slowly than do warm wetlands. One review of wetland restoration projects in New York state, for example, found that "after 55 years, barely 50 percent of the organic matter had accumulated on average in all these wetlands" compared to what was there before, he said.
"Current thinking holds that many ecosystems just reach an alternative state that is different, and you never will recover the original," he said.
In future studies, he will explore whether the slower carbon accumulation is due to a slow recovery of the native plant community or invasion by non-native plants.
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Coauthors with Moreno-Mateos and Power are Francisco A. Comin of the Department of Conservation of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Restoration at the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology in Zaragoza, Spain; and Roxana Yockteng of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France. Moreno-Mateos recently accepted a position as the restoration fellow at Stanford University's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve.
The work was supported by the Spanish Ministry for Innovation and Science, the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology and the National Center for Earth Surface Dynamics of the U.S. National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center.
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TOKYO (Reuters) ? Japanese manufacturers are bracing for a possible breakup of the euro zone, according to a Reuters poll released on Monday, with 65 percent saying they see a need to prepare for the currency block's partial or complete collapse.
Europe's two-year old sovereign debt crisis, which has left Greece teetering on the edge of default, has taken a heavy toll on Japanese corporate sentiment as exporters struggle with a strong yen and slower growth in China.
When manufacturers were asked if they are considering changing business plans in Europe, 31 percent of those responding said they are in the process of doing so or have already made changes. Of those firms, 90 percent said they could scale back operations or have already done so.
Many manufacturers were also looking to shrink operations in China and North America in favor of expanding in other Asian countries to tap demand for their goods, the survey showed.
Euro zone finance ministers will decide on Monday what terms of a Greek debt restructuring they are ready to accept as part of a second bailout package for Athens after negotiators for private creditors said they could not improve their offer.
Resolving the issue of a Greek debt swap is key to putting Athens' debt on a sustainable path and avoiding a chaotic default that could threaten the whole currency bloc.
The poll, taken January 5-17, surveyed 400 big firms, of which 247 responded. The questions were part of the Reuters tankan for January, which was published on Friday.
The tankan, which is closely correlated with the Bank of Japan's quarterly tankan survey of business sentiment, showed manufacturers remained pessimistic about business conditions for the second straight month in January.
Manufacturers showed concern about China's growth prospects, with 50 percent saying they could change their business strategy as China's red-hot growth cools. Of those firms, 65 percent say they could shrink operations.
China's economy is expanding at its weakest pace in 2-1/2 years, with sequentially softer annual growth in the last four quarters seen spilling over into the first three months of 2012, leading many analysts to expect the worst full-year growth in a decade.
The poll suggested half of Japanese manufacturers are taking another look at Asian markets excluding China, and 52 percent of those firm want to expand in an attempt to reduce dependence on the Chinese market.
Only 24 percent of manufacturers were considering changing their North American strategy, but 61 percent of those firms said they are likely to scale back.
Manufacturers were pessimistic on the Japanese market. One in three are reconsidering domestic business plans. Of those, 78 percent said they are likely to shrink operations.
Non-manufacturers, which include construction firms and retailers, were more positive on the domestic economy as they are likely to benefit from reconstruction following last year's record earthquake and the worst nuclear crisis in 25 years.
The survey showed that 75 percent of non-manufacturers are looking to change their domestic strategy, with 60 percent of those firms leaning toward expansion.
When manufacturers and non-manufacturers are combined, almost 70 percent say the global economy is the biggest risk to their outlook, followed by 57 percent who said they are worried about the rising yen.
(Reporting by Izumi Nakagawa; Writing by Stanley White; Editing by Michael Watson)
LOS ANGELES ? Hollywood's award season is going to linger on through April Fool's Day this year.
Organizers of the Razzies have changed the schedule for their nominations and prize ceremony. The spoof on the Academy Awards picks the year's worst films.
The Razzies used to announce contenders the night before the Oscar nominations, which are coming Tuesday.
Razzies founder John Wilson announced Sunday that nominations this season will be released Feb. 25, the eve of the Oscar ceremony. Winners of the Razzies will be announced on April 1.
Wilson says Razzies organizers have long wanted to have their awards coincide with April Fool's Day.
A news release announcing the change also notes that it will give the 600 Razzies voters "additional time to see the dreck they will eventually nominate."
WASHINGTON ? Newt Gingrich won nearly all of the delegates in South Carolina's Republican presidential primary Saturday, narrowing Mitt Romney's lead in the race for delegates to the party's national convention this summer.
Gingrich, the former House speaker, has won at least 23 delegates of the 25 delegates at stake. Gingrich and Romney were still battling for the final two delegates.
These are the first delegates Gingrich has won in a primary or caucus. In all, Gingrich has 25 delegates, including endorsements from Republican National Committee members who will automatically attend the convention. Romney has 33 delegates and Rick Santorum has 14.
The race for delegates is still in the early stages, providing plenty of opportunity for a candidate who gains momentum to seize the lead. It will take 1,144 delegates to win the GOP nomination. Only 62 delegates were at stake in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, combined.
Florida is up next on Jan. 31, with 50 delegates up for grabs in a winner-take-all primary. There will be six contests in February, with a total of 178 delegates at stake. Super Tuesday is March 6, with more than 400 delegates at stake in 10 states.
South Carolina Republicans awarded 11 delegates to the statewide winner and two delegates to the candidate who got the most votes in each of the state's seven congressional districts. Gingrich was the statewide winner and he won at least six congressional districts.
Romney and Gingrich were locked in a tight battle in the final congressional district with more than 90 percent of the precincts reporting. The South Carolina State Election Commission did not report the vote by congressional district, but The Associated Press was able to tally those votes.
The South Carolina Republican Party said it plans to finalize the congressional district results in the next seven to 10 days.
The Associated Press calculates the number of national convention delegates won by candidates in each presidential primary or caucus, based on state and national party rules. Most primaries and some caucuses are binding, meaning delegates won by the candidates are pledged to support that candidate at the national convention this summer.
Political parties in some states, however, use local caucuses to elect delegates to state or congressional district conventions, where national delegates are selected. In these states, the AP uses the results from local caucuses to calculate the number of national delegates each candidate will win, if the candidates maintain the same level of support.
The Wikimedia Foundation has finally released an official Wikipedia app for the Android Market, and just in time, too. The mobile version of Wikipedia was one of the few ways you could access the popular Wiki?s content during its site black out, part of the Foundation?s protest against the proposed SOPA bill.? Airbnb also had a notable launch this week, giving you a mobile outlet for listing and searching homes for short-term stays.
An official version for Android, Wikipedia?s free encyclopedia has been optimized for the most prevalent mobile platform in the world. With more than 20 million articles across 280 languages, Wikipedia is one of the most highly referenced bodies of content ever created. With the mobile app you can search for articles, save them for later reading on or offline, and toggle between languages. If you?re out and about, you can search for relevant articles based on your location, and easily share items with friends.? Wikipedia may finally have its own Android app, but it?s no stranger to mobile. The Wiki is referenced in dozens of Android apps as a reference tool for local search, amongst other things.
Airbnb?s popular service lets you turn your house into a nightly hotel, offering it up for short-time renting.? The new Android app comes in response to growing mobile searches, as nearly ten percent of its traffic comes from mobile users. Airbnb has rental offers from around 19,000 cities and towns in nearly 200 countries. This is especially useful for travelers abroad, with the added option of saving information locally. For travelers that may not have access to Wi-Fi, having itinerary and rental information available offline is a necessary perk. With a recent round of funding for over $100 million, Airbnb is able to further its mobile goals, revamping its mobile website in addition to the new Android app.
Another voice-assistance app for Android users, though Dragon Go! is a little less ?sassy? than its iPhone counterpart Siri. From Nuance, a company known for its voice recognition/speech-to-text capabilities, Dragon Go! is out to help you with a variety of queries. It will help you make purchases, answer questions, offer navigation and solve match problems. Dragon Go! is really setting out to be a hub for search and other basic tasks, offering direct access to several mobile web sites and services from YouTube to OpenTable, Pandora and ESPN. You?ll get accompanying search results in response to your queries, aggregating search and other content to answer your questions instead of merely providing a page of blue search links.
NBC (Free)
NBC may have hastened its way into web broadcasts, but they?ve been slower to the mobile scene.? Nevertheless, here?s NBC?s new Android app for video highlights from your favorite shows, along with exclusive photos, show-based games and trivia and a schedule of upcoming episodes. The dashboard can be customized for your interests around news and network programs, offering a mini mobile portal for all things network-related. There?s no access to full episodes just yet, but there?s plans for this in the works.
Star Trek has inspired plenty of real-life technology in the past three decades, and Android apps are no exception. Tricorder is an entertaining homage to the Star Trek gadget that kept space explorers aware of their surroundings. This sci-fi measurement tool displays real data streaming from your Android?s sensors, displaying a series of on-screen graphs. It?s a fun novelty that?s well-suited for the geeky Android user (isn?t that all of us?) and Trekkies alike.
D33P is known for their Facebook photo apps in the Android Market, and the latest is specific for your Facebook Timeline. The new profile format on the world?s most popular social network is spreading across Facebook?s millions of users, offering another way to personalize your home page. The Facebook Timeline Covers app lets you format images specifically for the Timeline, pulling images from your Android photo gallery or camera, an online library or your Facebook account. From here, you can set your cover photo as well as your profile photo, previewing your progress at each step.
Create a list of your favorite Android apps right here.
Between coming up with a curriculum, teaching, assigning homework, and getting important info to students, teachers have it rough. The iTunes U app is going to let them do all of that from an iPad. Which means students can basically take entire courses from their tablets. More »
For several years, health care providers have warned parents about pediatric heart problems associated with ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder) drugs. Medical wisdom said children should be given cardiac testing prior to being placed on stimulant drugs like Ritalin or Adderall. A new survey published by the American Academy of Pediatrics now shows that doctors are ambivalent about the necessity of cardiovascular counseling and testing before prescribing ADHD medications. Here are facts for parents about ADHD, drug therapy and heart problems in children.
* ADHD is a childhood condition that may last into adulthood. It is characterized by inattentiveness, impulsiveness and uncontrollable behavior. Children generally show a preponderance toward either focusing (attention deficit) or behavioral issues, but may exhibit both, says the National Institute of Mental Health.
* ADHD diagnosis is typically made based on symptom reports by parents. It is one of the most common childhood conditions and incidence of ADHD is increasing. The CDC says that in 2003, 7.8 percent of children ages 4-17 were diagnosed with it and by 2007 nearly 10 percent of kids had been diagnosed with ADHD at some point in their life.
* Stimulant medications have been used to successfully manage symptoms in about 70 percent of children with ADHD, say WebMD. Ritalin and Adderall are the most commonly prescribed drugs but Concerta, Metadate CD and Daytrana are becoming more popular, too.
* Ritalin Side Effects says that among the various concerns for children from taking stimulants are increased risk of heart palpitations, high blood pressure, SCD (sudden cardiac death) and other cardiac problems.
* Non-stimulants ADHD medications like atomoxetine (Stattera) have also been used. Doctors have prescribed anti-hypertensives and antidepressants such as bupropion (Wellbutrin) to treat ADHD symptoms, too. However, several years ago, the FDA placed "black box" warnings for parents alerting them to watch children taking Strattera or antidepressants for signs of suicide.
* In 2006, the New York Times reported on FDA advisory panel findings that 25 people, mostly children, had died from taking stimulants. Pediatricians were urged to administer cardiac tests to uncover any underlying heart conditions before prescribing ADHD stimulants.
* In 2008, the AAP declared that routine cardiac testing prior to ADHD drug prescription was unnecessary, unless the child's health history or current health condition warranted it.
* In 2011, Vanderbilt University reported on findings from the New England Journal of Medicine which tested 1.2 million children and found no link between ADHD medication and cardiovascular problems. Study authors cautioned parents to work closely with physicians and report any issues, especially if the child has other chronic health conditions.
* The recent Pediatrics study asked pediatricians how they addressed cardiac testing with their ADHD patients. Most doctors agreed that given the 24 percent risk to children of SCD (sudden cardiac death) and the 30 percent risk of legal liability, physicians should tell parents about heart problems as a side effect of ADHD medications. Nearly all the doctors did a routine health and physical screening, but less than half did in-depth cardiovascular testing or discussed cardiac risks with parents.
Marilisa Kinney Sachteleben writes about parenting concerns from 23 years raising four children and 25 years teaching K-8, special needs, adult education and homeschool.
KINGSTON, Jamaica ? Winston Riley, an innovative reggae musician and producer, has died of complications from a gunshot wound to the head. He was 65.
Riley died Thursday at University Hospital of the West Indies, where he had been a patient since November, when he was shot at his house in an upscale neighborhood in the capital of Kingston, his son Kurt Riley said Friday.
Riley also had been shot in August and was stabbed in September last year. His record store in Kingston's downtown business district also was burned down several years ago. Police have said they know of no motives and have not arrested anyone.
Kurt Riley told the Jamaica Observer newspaper that the family did not know what motivated the attacks.
"Unfortunately, Daddy didn't wake up so we could talk to him to find out if there was something he was not telling us," he was quoted as saying. "He was a straightforward man who was allergic to hypocrisy."
As a teenager, Riley founded an influential harmony group, The Techniques, which recorded for pioneer producer Arthur "Duke" Reid. Riley also toured with Byron Lee and later gained fame for producing songs such as "Double Barrel" by Dave Barker and Ansell Collins.
He worked with musicians including Gregory Isaacs, Johnny Osbourne, Sister Nancy and Buju Banton.
Musicologist Kingsley Goodison, who knew Riley for more than 40 years, said he was one of the people responsible for introducing reggae to England.
"Winston Riley is an unsung hero," he said. "He was one of the hardest workers in the business."
Riley also is credited with creating the stalag rhythm, which later influenced hip-hop and dancehall. Unlike his contemporaries who shunned dancehall music, Riley embraced contemporary reggae and had several big hits during the 1980s.
One of his biggest productions was singer Tenor Saw's "Ring The Alarm", which has been sampled by several hip-hop artists.
Riley is survived by several children and grandchildren.
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Public release date: 24-Jan-2012
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An official version for Android, Wikipedia?s free encyclopedia has been optimized for the most prevalent mobile platform in the world. With more than 20 million articles across 280 languages, Wikipedia is one of the most highly referenced bodies of content ever created. With the mobile app you can search for articles, save them for later reading on or offline, and toggle between languages. If you?re out and about, you can search for relevant articles based on your location, and easily share items with friends.? Wikipedia may finally have its own Android app, but it?s no stranger to mobile. The Wiki is referenced in dozens of Android apps as a reference tool for local search, amongst other things.
Another voice-assistance app for Android users, though Dragon Go! is a little less ?sassy? than its iPhone counterpart Siri. From Nuance, a company known for its voice recognition/speech-to-text capabilities, Dragon Go! is out to help you with a variety of queries. It will help you make purchases, answer questions, offer navigation and solve match problems. Dragon Go! is really setting out to be a hub for search and other basic tasks, offering direct access to several mobile web sites and services from YouTube to OpenTable, Pandora and ESPN. You?ll get accompanying search results in response to your queries, aggregating search and other content to answer your questions instead of merely providing a page of blue search links.
Star Trek has inspired plenty of real-life technology in the past three decades, and Android apps are no exception. Tricorder is an entertaining homage to the Star Trek gadget that kept space explorers aware of their surroundings. This sci-fi measurement tool displays real data streaming from your Android?s sensors, displaying a series of on-screen graphs. It?s a fun novelty that?s well-suited for the geeky Android user (isn?t that all of us?) and Trekkies alike.